Poulomi Basu

Ecdysis confronts the shame and silence surrounding women's blood politics across cultures and continents — alongside the mystical moments that mark a girl's coming of age. The book traces wounds carried across generations — the silence, the suppression, the bodies made sites of struggle — and the strength that emerges when that silence is broken. A major new essay by Basu draws lines between her own family history, the women she has worked with, and the systems of patriarchy, caste, race and colonialism that shape women's lives. "Courage," she writes, "is truly contagious." Spanning photography, virtual and mixed reality, immersive film, installation and a graphic novel, Poulomi Basu's expanded practice has become one of the most significant and impactful artistic investigations of its kind. ABOUT THE ARTIST Poulomi Basu is a neuroexpansive artist known for her exploration of the interrelationship between systems of power and bodies through work that exists at the limits of photography/art, film, creative technologies and activism. Basu’s work is defined by her transnational identity, working across hybrid, interdisciplinary and experimental mediums. Whilst the centre of her works is often women of the Global South (non euro-centric), like herself, her art and its histories are connected beyond their places of origin. Basu is a BAFTA Breakthrough UK 2024 awardee and received the 2023 ICP Museum Infinity Award for outstanding contribution to ‘Contemporary Photography and New Media’. Her work ‘Maya: The Birth of a Superhero’ was nominated in competition at Festival de Cannes 2024 and exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum and at the United Nations HQ in New York. Her first photobook ‘Centralia’ was published in 2020 and the book and exhibition won the 2020 Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award Jury Prize, and was shortlisted for the prestigious 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize among many others. In 2019 Amnesty International noted her as an important and brilliant “human rights activist breaking the taboos surrounding menstruation” and violence against women. In 2020, Basu was awarded the prestigious Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society for her transmedia work Blood Speaks, which put menstrual rights on the international agenda and resulted in a major policy change. Blood Speaks was shown at the Women Deliver Conference and CPH:Dox, amongst others. Basu has exhibited widely in solo and group shows such as Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), Focal Point Gallery of Contemporary Art (Tate+ UK), The Barbican, The Photographer’s Gallery, Autograph (Tate+) etc. Basu is also a Magnum Foundation Social Justice Fellow. Her works are held in the collections of Victoria & Albert Museum (UK), Museum of Modern Art Library – Special Collections (USA), Harvard Art Museums (USA), Autograph ABP (UK), Martin Parr Foundation (UK), Rencontres d’Arles (France), Olympic Museum (Switzerland), Lightwork (USA). Edition of 1000 Main book: 236 pages - on 4 different paper stocks 220 x 300 mm, portrait graphic novel 80 pages ISBN: 978-1-917282-29-1